12 Age effects in SLA

these in turn require much detailed (snapshot) scrutiny of grammatical and lexical patterning. The theory of language learning affordances, in a wider ecology of learning, therefore accords a place for a variety of meaning-making resources, all of which may activate different kinds of affordances that the learning environment can enable, if this environment is set up to provide a rich semiotic budget (van Lier, 2000). Now that the notion of affordance is gaining traction in the applied linguistics literature, it is perhaps worth concluding with the recommendation that the term affordance should be used only in the context of its twin dening features: its inseparability from agency, and its dialogicity or reciprocity. A third feature, the immediacy or directness of affordances (as opposed to the contribution of mediation or indirectness of various kinds) will no doubt be the subject of much debate for some time to come (Forrester, 1999; van Lier, 2004).

J.J.s ecological approach. Psychological Research, 55, 24857. van Lier, L. (1996). Interaction in the Language Curriculum: Awareness, Autonomy and Authenticity. London: Longman. (2000). From input to affordance: Socialinteractive learning from an ecological perspective. In J.P. Lantolf (ed.), Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning: Recent Advances, pp. 24559. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (2004). The Ecology and Semiotics of Language Learning: A Sociocultural Perspective. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic. (2007). Action-based teaching, autonomy and identity. International Journal of Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 1, 4665.

Age effects in SLA

Carmen Muoz Universitat de Barcelona
The inuence that learners age may have on their acquisition of a second or additional language has become a crucial issue in debates in both theoretical and applied areas of SLA research. Its relevance has increased as second language (L2) learning has become a common phenomenon in different political situations and varied exposure conditions, such as mass immigration (naturalistic language learning), compulsory schooling (instructed language learning), or school immersion programs. It was in the context of the latter, the Canadian immersion programs, that the debate about the best or most effective starting age began with Penelds notion that for the purposes of learning languages, the human brain becomes progressively stiff and rigid after the age of nine (Peneld and Roberts, 1959: 236). Lenneberg (1967) maintained a similar perspective with his formulation of the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH). According to this hypothesis, there is a period in life between the age of two and puberty in which rst language (L1) acquisition must necessarily take place, otherwise it will be impossible or incomplete. Although Lennebergs

See also: awareness, dialogic inquiry, discourse and pragmatics in SLA, ecology of language learning, social and sociocultural approaches to SLA, symbolic mediation
References Forman, R. (2005). Teaching EFL in Thailand: A Bilingual Study. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. Forrester, M. (1999). Conversation and instruction within apprenticeship: Affordances for learning. In Ainley, P. and Rainbird, H. (eds), Apprenticeship: Towards a New Paradigm of Learning, pp. 8697. London: Kogan Page. Gibson, E.J. and Pick, A.D. (2000). An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gibson, J.J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Gregory, R. (1991). Seeing as thinking: An active theory of perception. In E.J. Gibson (ed.), An Odyssey in Learning and Perception, pp. 511 19. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Natsoulas, T. (1993). Perceiving, its component stream of perceptual experience, and Gibson,

Age effects in SLA 13

only evidence at the time was based on his observations concerning different recovery patterns of patients with brain injuries, his biological hypothesis concurred with the Chomskyan conception of language innateness. As for L2 acquisition, it was argued that it may resemble L1 acquisition and approach nativelike attainment only if it begins during this privileged period (Johnson and Newport, 1989). The rst review of the literature on age differences dates back to the 1979 publication by Krashen, Long and Scarcella. Two ndings appeared consistently across the studies then available: older starters proceed through early stages of morphological and syntactic development faster than younger starters; and child starters outperform adult starters in the long run. Hence, a distinction may be made between two types of advantage: a rate advantage for older starters, and an ultimate attainment advantage for younger starters. The latter advantage was deemed more important because it was related to the possibility that child starters, but not late starters, could achieve nativelike command of a second language. This suggests differences in learning mechanisms between children and adults that should be accounted for by a theory of language and language learning. Research in recent decades has accumulated rich and complex evidence of age effects in L2 learning, but it has not ended the dispute about the existence, scope and characteristics of a critical period. One crucial issue in the discussion centers on the shape of the decline of age effects: whereas an elbow shape showing abrupt discontinuity after a certain age would strongly argue for the end of a privileged period for L2 acquisition, a smooth linear decline would instead suggest an age-related decline that is consistent with the contour of general cognitive deterioration (see Birdsong, 2006). Another signicant point in question is that of the existence and interpretation of cases of nativelike achievement in late learners, a matter that has been expected to provide nal evidence for the existence of maturational constraints. While the jury is still out on such central issues, a number of specic research questions have sought answers in behavioral evidence, such as: are all aspects of language similarly affected by

starting age of learning? Is an early starting age an absolute guarantee for nativelikeness in a second language? What is the effect of language learning aptitude? And what is the effect of learning context? Other questions have their roots in linguistic theory, psycholinguistics, or neurobiological investigation. The issue of whether all aspects of language are similarly affected by starting age of learning is related to the existence of either one critical period or of several sensitive periods for the acquisition of the different components of a language. In view of research ndings that indicate that age-related declines may be variable in onset in relation to the area of language under study, Long (1990) suggested that not all areas of language may be affected at the same time. He claims that the supposed closure for phonology may be as early as age six while it may be around 15 for morphology and syntax. Moreover, while Long holds that all aspects of language are affected by maturational constraints, including lexis as well, a different standpoint is offered by Scovel (1988), who argues that phonology is the only aspect affected by age constraints because of its neuromotor etiology. In fact, the inuence that age has on the various language dimensions seems to affect phonological development in a distinctive way. To illustrate, in the area of L1 perception, evidence sustaining a very early schedule has mounted up. In the rst months of life infants are endowed with universal discrimination abilities, which decline or, more specically, become attuned to the native language as early as one year of age. In second language acquisition, older learners may be less likely to perceive differences between L1 and L2 sounds, once the L1 categories are fully developed. As a consequence, learners may perceive and produce non-native sounds under a greater inuence of their native language. Moreover, research has also shown that L2 input (its quantity and quality) and L1 use are predictive factors of L2 speech mastery (e.g., Flege, 1995). The second question above whether L2 learning that begins in childhood inevitably results in nativelikeness has been addressed only recently. Findings from studies with increasingly demanding tests and measures seem to show that this is not the

14 Age effects in SLA

case, and that an early age of onset is a necessary although not sufcient requirement for nativelike ultimate attainment in a second language (Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam, 2009). Whereas such a nding does not deny the existence of a critical period as such, it introduces some complexity to the former, more deterministic prediction. Another factor that has added complexity to the critical period debate is the possible interaction between age effects and language aptitude. Mixed results have been obtained in research so far: while some ndings seem to show that having superior language analytical skills is a condition for late learners nativelike attainment in a second language (DeKeyser et al., 2010), other studies have observed that a superior language learning aptitude may also be a characteristic of successful child L2 acquisition (Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam, 2008). The role played by language learning context has not traditionally been addressed in the work inspired by maturational constraints issues. However, some authors have argued that the critical period hypothesis might only apply to language acquisition under sustained conditions of naturalistic or informal exposure, thereby excluding its generalization to situations of instructed foreign language. A reason for this may lie in the scarcity of the input learners receive in an instructed foreign language learning setting. According to DeKeyser (e.g., 2000), the lack of massive exposure to the target language does not allow children to use their superior implicit learning mechanisms, the possibility for implicit learning (acquisition from mere exposure to the language) being the critical difference between children and adults. A number of studies have been recently conducted in instructed language learning settings that have obtained some consistent ndings. First, it has been conrmed that, where exposure to the target language is limited, older children and adolescents are more efcient learners than younger children. That is to say, after the same amount of instructional hours older children are observed to attain higher levels of prociency than younger children, especially in those areas that are more cognitively demanding (Muoz, 2006). This nding conrms the older starters short-term rate advantage also found in naturalistic language learning settings

(Snow and Hoefnagel-Hhle, 1978). The older learners advantage in learning rate may be the result of their superior cognitive maturity relative to younger learners, which grants older learners greater efciency in learning. In contrast, the younger starters advantage in ultimate attainment found in naturalistic exposure settings may be the result of the younger learners superior implicit learning skills, but implicit learning is slow and requires massive exposure to the target language (DeKeyser, 2000). In the absence of massive exposure, younger learners in instructional settings seem to be deprived of this long-term advantage (see Muoz, 2008). The comparison of early and late school immersion programs has also brought evidence of age effects. In such a context, an early start has been observed to result in superior levels of language comprehension and oral production skills, relative to a late start, but not of reading comprehension and writing skills (Turnbull et al., 1998). In sum, results from different learning contexts seem to show that age effects are mediated by context, so that ndings from L2 learning under naturalistic exposure conditions which provided empirical evidence for the widely extended belief that younger is better are not generalizable to all L2 learning contexts. Researchers debating age-related issues from a Chomskyan perspective are concerned with the question of whether late learners have total, partial, or no access to Universal Grammar (UG), which, according to Chomsky, informs and guides language acquisition. An active research agenda from a partial access standpoint has tried to isolate precisely which linguistic modules, submodules, features, or interface areas are affected by maturation. On the other hand, other researchers ndings indicate that late learners have full access to the target formal features or to particular UG-derived mental representations. As can be seen, the UG perspective is less concerned with nativelike performance or behavior than with underlying competence and whether the associated mental representations can continue to be induced from L2 data with advancing maturation. A different view on the study of age effects is taken by a psycholinguistic perspective that claims

Age effects in SLA 15

that differences between younger and older learners may reside in their respective processing mechanisms. For example, work on grammatical processing seems to indicate that adult language learners under-use syntactic information and assign representations to the input that lack grammatical detail (Felser and Clashen, 2009). From a neurobiological perspective, researchers have been looking for conrmatory evidence for the claim that a lateacquired L2 is represented in the brain differently from the L1. At present, ndings highlight the role of L2 prociency and exposure as well (see Abutalebi, 2008), but despite the recent technical advances this type of research is still in its infancy. A last concern to note from the current debate of issues revolving around age factors in SLA relates to the appropriateness of the native speaker model in the examination of L2 attainment. In brief, the important differences existing between a monolingual and a bilingual, such as the possession of knowledge of another language by the latter, suggest that there is no intrinsic reason why the L2 users attainment should be the same as that of a monolingual native speaker (Cook, 1995). From this standpoint, some researchers argue that a more appropriate comparison might be one between later L2 beginners and those who begin to acquire an L2 in early childhood (see Muoz and Singleton, 2011). To conclude, the vast number of studies on age effects conducted in recent decades has enriched our knowledge of the age factor while revealing a complexity that is greater than previously suspected. In that respect, researchers from different perspectives have argued that initial age of learning may be considered a macrovariable that includes, among other factors, state of neurobiological maturation, stage of cognitive development, levels of L1 prociency, L1 and L2 use, and language dominance. In addition, a number of factors, such as the socio-cultural context, the quality of the L2 learning experience, and learners attitudes and orientations have been observed to combine with initial age of learning, resulting in differences in L2 attainment. Hence, research is needed that integrates quantitative and qualitative methods in order to better grasp the individual and social determinants that interplay with age of learning. In the end, the isolation of age effects on L2 acquisition may

be neither possible nor the most adequate aim in age-related investigation.

See also: child second language acquisition, cognitive aging, Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH), implicit learning, native speaker, psycholinguistics of SLA
References Abutalebi, J. (2008). Neural aspects of second language representation and language control. Acta Psychologica, 128, 46678. Abrahamsson, N. and Hyltenstam, K. (2008). The robustness of aptitude effects in near-native second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30 (4), 481509. (2009). Age of onset and nativelikeness in a second language: Listener perception versus linguistic scrutiny. Language Learning, 59 (2), 249306. Birdsong, D. (2006). Age and second language acquisition and processing. A selective overview. Language Learning, 56 (1), 949. Cook, V. (1995). Multicompetence and effects of age. In D. Singleton and Z. Lengyel (eds), The Age Factor in Second Language Acquisition, pp. 5156. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. DeKeyser, R. (2000). The robustness of critical period effects in second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22 (4), 499533. DeKeyser, R., Al-Shabtay, I. and Ravid, D. (2010). Cross-linguistic evidence for the nature of age effects in second language acquisition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 31 (4), 41338. Felser, C. and Clashen, H. (2009). Grammatical processing of spoken language in child and adult language learners. Journal of Psycholinguisti Research, 38 (3), 30519. Flege, J.E. (1995). Second-language speech learning: Theory, ndings, and problems. In W. Strage (ed.), Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Issues in Cross-language Research, pp. 22973. Timonium, MD: York Press. Johnson, J.S. and Newport, E.L. (1989). Critical period effects in second language learning: The inuence of maturational state on the acquisition of ESL. Cognitive Psychology, 21 (1), 6099.

16 Agreement

Krashen, S., Long, M. and Scarcella, R. (1979). Age, rate and eventual attainment in second language acquisition. TESOL Quarterly, 9, 57382. Reprinted in S.D. Krashen, R.C. Scarcella and M.H. Long (eds) (1982). Child-Adult Differences in Second Language Acquisition, pp. 16172. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers. Lenneberg, E.H. (1967). Biological Foundations of Language. New York: Wiley. Long, M. (1990). Maturational constraints on language development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 12 (3), 25185. Muoz, C. (ed.) (2006). Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. (2008). Symmetries and asymmetries of age effects in naturalistic and instructed L2 learning. Applied Linguistics, 24 (4), 57896. Muoz, C. and Singleton, D. (2011). A critical review of age-related research on L2 ultimate attainment. Language Teaching, 44 (1), 135. Peneld, W. and Roberts, L. (1959). Speech and Brain Mechanisms. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Scovel, T. (1988). A Time to Speak. A Psycholinguistic Inquiry into the Critical Period for Human Speech. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Snow, C. and Hoefnagel-Hhle, M. (1978). The critical period for language acquisition: Evidence from second language learning. Child Development, 49, 111428. Turnbull, M., Lapkin, S., Hart, D. and Swain, M. (1998). Time on task and immersion graduates French prociency. In S. Lapkin (ed.), French Second Language Education in Canada: Empirical Studies, pp. 3155. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

Agreement
J. Dean Mellow Simon Fraser University
Agreement occurs when a words form depends upon the inherent grammatical categories of another word or phrase (Anderson, 1985: 172). For

example, the English verb write has the variants write and writes. The use of these forms agrees with the person (rst, second, third) and number (singular, plural) of the subject of the sentence (i.e. I write; she writes). Other agreement patterns involve grammatical categories such as noun class (e.g., grammatical genders including masculine, feminine, and neuter) and case (e.g., subject, nominative). Compared to other languages, Modern English tends to use relatively xed word order rather than agreement to indicate which words are members of the same phrase or clause. Bill VanPatten (personal communication) provided the following Spanish sentence in which number and gender agreement involves most major language elements (agreement is indicated in italics): Las tpicas casas romanas eran pequeas y construdas de ladrillo. Typical Roman houses were small and built with bricks. In second language acquisition (SLA), some agreement patterns are difcult to acquire and are learned relatively later or never fully mastered. As a result, agreement phenomena have been widely considered in research, theory development, and application. For example, a review of foundational empirical studies of morpheme order acquisition led Krashen and Terrell (1983: 29) to conclude that the third person singular non-past (3sg)-s sufx is usually one of the last morphemes to be acquired by English as a second language (L2) learners, supporting their hypothesis that language is learned in a Natural Order. Chen et al. (2007) found that advanced Chinese learners of English could accurately judge the grammaticality of agreement patterns, but exhibited neural responses (electrophysiological data in an ERP study) that were distinct from native speakers. Agreement patterns have also been incorporated into testing materials. The Language Prociency Index (LPI) is a test for determining university-level language prociency (University of British Columbia Applied Research and Evaluation Services, 2004). To distinguish between developing prociency and adequate prociency in essay writing, the LPI criteria include the number of subjectverb agreement errors. The relatively late acquisition of patterns such as English subjectverb agreement results from the interaction of many factors. Functionally, the